The eternal clouds of a man-burnt sky veiled the rising moon. The holes in the cloud cover cast small pools of moonlight as the sound of the small close-in weapon system (CIWS) chattered over the din of autocannon fire. Waves of mechs stomped towards each other, artillery carved holes out of the soil, and the infantry war on the ground looked like a battle between swarming ant hives. Lieutenant Kazimiera “Kaz” Mazur was pushing her Sheila hard, its shoulder-mounted anti-armor cannon hammering away at any of the Mithrian spider-mechs that dared push too close to their squad’s position.

  “Kaz, you’re out of formation!” Captain Reynolds of the Arcadian mechanized forces yelled over the comms at his subordinate.

  The impact of the mini-missile storm from the assault drone swarm had taken out the stabilizer on Kaz’ suit’s left hip, ripping right through the armor. The drone swarm’s man-in-the-loop had somehow known that Kaz’s Sheila had taken a hit there from an autocannon during the last failed push. The grease monkeys had told Kaz everything was copacetic, but she knew something wasn’t right with her mech when she got in.

  “No go, sir! She won’t move! Last hit knocked out my left stabilizer. Looks like it’s lodged in the joint,” Kaz shot back over the squad comms. The Arcadian forces had been failing to hold their ground for the last hour, which was a good summary of the Third Mithro-Arcadian War in general. Captain Reynolds had been moving them back slowly to cover the infantry boys, who were still slogging it out in the mud with the Mithrian infantry. The air was as thick with enemy fire as it was with rain; most rounds were harmlessly pinging off the dense, wide, squat mechs they were piloting, but those same rounds would rip apart any man exposed on the ground.

  “Hold tight. We got evac coming in three minutes. I’ll - ” Reynolds was cut off as Kaz’s world exploded.

  Her head swam - she’d heard her mech’s CIWS engage a moment before she blacked out, and she had patchy memories of a klaxon starting to go off, but everything else was fuzzy scraps of mental static. Kaz pulled her face up from the mud, gasping for air, her short-cut blond hair caked with the stuff. The effort only earned her a stab of pain and she felt some warmth running down the inside of her suit. At first she thought it was piss but then she saw spots of red on her white flight suit.

  Kaz let out a scream of frustration, drowned out by the sound of automatic fire and a thousand drone engines, as she fought her way out of the wreckage of her Sheila. She forced herself upright against a tree, the watery pool of mud created from a footprint of one of the 12-meter-tall mechs that had stomped across the battlefield. She’d been tossed into it when... when...

  She blanched as she pieced together her memories, her mind racing. She’d been hit by something big, fast, and hard. The mini-CIWS of her suit only engaged at close range so something had hit her out of the blue at near point-blank range.

  Other things came to her.

  At first it was just physical sensations like pain and being jostled around violently in the crash. Then her sensory memory rebooted and she could hear a ringing in her ears and she could recall flickers of blue and white on her monitor the instant before the hit.

  A voice came to her over her helmet’s comms, one she recognized even in her dazed state.

  “Get the hell out! Retreat! Retreat! We got a hound! A hound!!”

  It was Captain Reynolds and he was panicked. He never panicked; he was such an assured officer that he made other people feel like they were invincible when he was around.

  A hound...

  More memories came back to Kaz. Her brain, still in stock, was only now registering what he’d said.

  “Goddamn it.. was that what hit me? Did Mithris hire a fucking fang?!” Kaz thought to herself. “A goddamn vampire piloting a fucking vat-grown zombie covered in armor. Half biological, half mechanical, and all asshole.”

  As she dragged herself through the mud she still couldn’t quite believe it, “How much did that cost the Mithris government? A million? Two? Ten? And that’s just for one battle...” She shivered in the cold rain as she tried to rationalize the use of a super-weapon. “They must have really wanted this piece of dirt something fierce...”

  Kaz didn’t mind a fair fight; there was some raw dignity in an honest loss to a superior foe. Then again, the Mithrians never fought fair and pulling a fang out was like tossing a nuke into a knife fight; a vampire piloting a Hellhound was the equivalent of a destroyer on land. Arcadia had been on the backfoot for months as the big “Народная Республика Митис” (The People's Republic of Mithris), a global superpower, had been beating the tar out of the smaller Arcadian National League over some perceived “fall to Nazi ideology”. It was all propaganda and misinformation.

  “Lenard! Autocannon on the left - scratch that! Full retreat! Command is going to bombard the area. We gotta pull out YESTERDAY!” Reynolds was shouting. Kaz realized that if she was able to hear him, her comms still worked. She thumbed the comm stud on her glove and tried to speak, but she found she still had the wind knocked out of her. She instinctively grabbed her stomach and coughed violently, blood coming out in bright gobs on the ground and mixing with the mud before the rain diluted them away. She pulled a combat stim from her belt’s emergency supply kit and jabbed the auto-injector into her thigh to stabilize her a bit.

  “Some little piece of my Sheila’s wreckage is sticking out of my stomach - probably nicked a few things...” she thought, because speaking was nearly impossible for her. She found the offending piece just below her right floating rib and winced as she gingerly touched it. She’d live, if she got to a medic, but if she couldn’t she didn’t like her chances.

  She let herself yell to vent the pain and frustration but then she bit her lip and transmuted that pain into stubborn determination. She’d signed up to kill some Mithrian pigs, and a shrapnel wound wouldn’t be the thing that stopped her. She needed to survive.

  Then she sucked it up, bit her lower lip again to stop it from trembling for a moment, and thumbed the comm stud again. Screw giving up.

  “Reynolds, I’m - ” She had to stop for a second as her teeth chattered. She wasn’t sure if it was from pain or adrenaline, or maybe both.

  “Kaz? Where are you?!” he shot back instantly.

  “God - goddamn fang. Hit my Sheila,” Kaz stammered. Hounds were armored, vat-grown, undead giants puppeted from within their lifeless chest by vampires.

  “I know, Kaz. I know. I saw it. Got Franklin too. Came out of nowhere...” he repeated, something pulled his attention away. “Fuck... yeah. OK... But where are you?! The Air Force is going to pound this place in three minutes. Gotta get out of the open!”

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  “Real... helpful,” Kaz shot back as her eyes flashed around the rain-soaked battlefield, searching for anything resembling cover. It’d once been a farm, maybe a hundred years ago, but everything had been overgrown before it’d been ripped up by shells and tanks and mechs. There’d been trees there once, some big boulders, but most things were dead. She couldn’t really complain; humanity had blotted out the sky in their last big war and most big vegetation had died. Humanity had cast the world into eternal night with their nukes and now she was paying for it with the lack of cover.

  “Okay, Kaz, found you. Got a structure near you twenty meters due north,” Reynolds replied a moment later. She could tell he was fixated on something else, but she appreciated the moments he was stealing from his own life-or-death struggle for her.

  Kaz craned her neck to look around the overturned tree stump she’d propped herself up on. She could see what looked like a small stone church next to a disturbed graveyard. The Arcadian mech pilot doubted it would keep her alive in a full bombardment, but it was better than sitting in the sucking mud waiting for an airburst shell to vaporize her.

  “Roger, Reynolds,” she acknowledged and began to limp. The gut wound made it impossible for her to walk properly and every step caused her to wince, but she was able to make a good headway. Suddenly she saw a mech dance across the battlefield. The hound was a lithe, lanky, armored mech about 15 meters tall and moved like a person rather than a machine; she knew it had to be the Hellhound that’d taken her out. It was painted in shades of white and dull blue with bright red flourishes, and had a rack of short spears on its back. On its chest was an armored panel projecting out a little bit. She knew its vampire pilot was in there, linked to it like a tick. The pilot looked like an impossibly angular muscular man in a blue and white skintight suit and a single red eye. The biotech monstrosity was scrapping with a broad, flat, blocky, humanoid Arcadian mech that she instantly recognized as Reynolds’ Tasmania.

  Pods of mini-missiles were opening from Reynolds’ mech but the Hellhound was dancing. Mechs moved like machines, slow and snappy, but Hellhounds... they floated. They were like a liquid, the way they could flow around things. Hellhounds didn’t warp or distort their form, though she’d heard that a Strix in a Hellhound could literally control their shape, but they moved in such an impossible way that it felt like they did.

  They all missed.

  All two hundred mini-missiles... missed.

  It wasn’t fair.

  It was cheating.

  Kaz had known from the moment she’d seen the two mechs who the winner would be. Autocannons thundered from the hips of Reynolds’ suit, the main 200mm cannon it was wielding, and he’d even engaged the anti-aircraft guns for all the good they’d do. Nothing hit, or at least nothing that’d do damage to a Hellhound. Kaz crawled across the cold earth, avoiding the deepest mud as best she could, as Reynolds fought the battle she knew he’d lose.

  The enemy Hellhound rushed Reynolds’ Tasmania with speed so fast it was hard to track with the human eye. The Hellhound planted a foot on the Tasmania’s chest, grabbed the arm with the integrated 200mm cannon and pulled. The arm ripped straight off and the Hellhound savagely flung it to the ground. It slammed into the earth next to Kaz, splashing the mud and sending debris everywhere, and she instinctively hit the ground and covered her head. The enormous mecha limb bounced once, scarring the earth where it hit, and flew over Kaz, rolling to a stop against a burned-out tank stuck in the mud.

  Kaz heard crazed laughter and, as she resumed her crawl towards the old medieval church, she knew it was from the fang.

  “You dumb bastard! You meatsack! You thought that’d work?! You absolute maggot!!” The vampire pilot was laughing to himself with manic glee as his Hellhound pushed over the Tasmania with the foot it had on its chest. Reynolds was still firing any weapon he had left, but it was useless; he was out of any weapons with enough firepower to critically injure the Hellhound.

  Kaz limped faster, as fast as her body would let her, and her vision blurred. She staggered as she managed a half-run, the combat stim doing its job of keeping her awake, and she tried to will herself to move faster towards the church in the heavy rain. An explosion rocked the side of the Hellhound and the laughing stopped. Some ballsy tanker had rushed in to save Reynolds. Several more shots rained down around the vampire in his massive mech suit of death but nothing else hit. The initial armor-penetrating round had punched through some of the armor of the Hellhound though and a small wound could be seen, leaking synthetic blood. It hit the ground and pooled a bit, like slobber from a dog’s mouth.

  “Goddamn gnats! I’m not paid enough for this bullshit!” the manic vampire yelled and thrust his hand down to Reynolds’ mech. It ripped off the dome-shaped, neckless head of his Tasmania and whipped it like a baseball at the tank. The thrown mech head crumpled the little tank and rolled it to its side before a fire broke out. Kaz knew the main comm array was in the head of a Tasmania so that meant Reynolds wouldn't be able to get any long range messages to her but his short range would still be working. If he could just get out of the cockpit mounted in his suit’s chest...

  “Do it, Reynolds... get out. DO IT!” she prayed under her breath, urging him more with her mind as with her words.

  Then, something cut into her thoughts.

  “I smell it. Fresh life. Fresh death! I need it.”

  She didn’t so much hear the voice as she felt it. There was a feral nature there in the way it “spoke”. Like a caged animal, a royal beast, a fine machine, or a serial killer looking to do what they were made for.

  It made Kaz stop as she braced herself with one arm against the wooden door of the church.

  “Who the hell are you?!” she yelled to no one, the rain beating down.

  “Salvation.”

  Kaz felt that single word strike her soul, causing it to painfully resonate like a struck bell. It felt like a threat as much as an offer. It felt delectable in her mind... so enticing...

  “Ejecting!” she heard Reynolds say over the emergency comm as a dense slab of his suit’s chest armor blew off and slammed into the vampire’s Hellhound still standing over him. It took the panel full in the face and the unexpected hit caused the vampire’s mech to stagger back a bit. Kaz couldn’t think about him now, she could hear the drone of aircraft high up and knew the rain of fire would come any moment.

  “No! Who the hell are you!?” she yelled as she gripped her head as she kicked open the door to the small one-room church with the other. She beheld in the darkness a single coffin on the stage of the church, pews all facing it. On the coffin was a single red rose, immaculate and fresh.

  “I’m apparently your only chance.”

  Kaz gasped from the pain of her wound, yet she moved deeper into the old church. She could feel a pulse here; she couldn’t explain it but she could feel the world pulsing like blood in her veins, or a heart just starting to beat. Slowly at first, impossibly slow, but it got up to speed.

  “I am THE Strigoi. The father of Dhampir. Through me you will receive damnation and deliverance from your enemies! I am your only choice to live. Release me!”

  She knew what it was then, but was it something worse than that Hellhound outside?

  “Bullshit!” Kaz shot back, but she could hear the rolling thunder of aerial bombardments starting in the distance, “I’m my only choice! Sell yourself however you want, you edgy vampire bastard! But if I release you, you work for me! You got that!?”

  Deep baritone laughter echoed in her soul. Kaz could feel eyes watching her soul as the mental laughter echoed inside her. It was... pleased? Excited? Amused?

  “Very well, my master. Speak your desire and remove the rose that binds me. Give me some of your life and you will unsheathe my sword. You can draw me and point me at whoever you wish. But, know that when you die, or oppose The Pillar, I will be free and... we both know you won’t live forever...”

  Kaz shivered involuntarily but staggered the last few steps to the altar upon which the black coffin sat.

  “Fine then. Take it! Take my blood and damn my soul if you have to, but wake the hell up!” She dashed the rose off the coffin. “But if you do, you must serve me in my fight to get my revenge on the Mithris pigs who are trying to take my homeland! Now wake up, you BASTARD!!!”

  The bloody smear she’d left on the coffin slowly sunk into it. All she could hear was laughing. Ominous, foreboding, terrible laughing...

  ~ ~ ~

  “When man reaches the day of oblivion, it shall be because I sent among you,

  demons of the blood, apostates of peace, heretics of decency.

  They shall be guised as mortal man, but you shall know them for their sharp fangs and cruel ways.

  May you clothe yourself in wisdom, do not fall for their temptations-

  Their promises of power, their strength in arms, and their ways of war.

  Through their designs the strength at the base of The Pillar shall fail.

  Through their influence will mankind be tempted to apocalypse.

  Through their blood-drunk failure shall the world be unmade.

  Give not in to their bloody temptations.

  Give not your blood to these demons.

  Kill them where they lay with oaken stakes.

  For to accept one into your heart is to doom us all.

  In God’s name, his will be done, Amen.”

  -The Red Gospel

  Chapter 1, Verse 23-36